Blood Moon
by paperthins
Summary: Oneshot. The conversation between Jack Merridew and Lord of the Flies if it was him that stumbled into the clearing that fateful night instead of Simon. Slight implied JackxRalph.


Blood Moon

The flames flared up in the dusky, charcoal colored blue sky where the faint outlines of a waning moon glowed against the reflected red. Underneath the red glow was a burning furnace, casting shadows onto the burnt grass, trampled until flattened by the bloodlust filled boys that was encircling the fire.

Chanting a strong rhythm that flowed out of their mouths, the boys raised their hands, some linked to the one beside them, and _danced_. It was wild, barbaric, a sense of utter madness, yet with a strange fluidity like liquid moonlight as if they were all boneless, lost to the world in an alien dimension. The headless pig roasting brown sent out sizzles and sparks as if it was agreeing with approval.

And then the boy who started it all held up a bloodstained knife, and immediately the chanting was replaced with hollers and yells, all giddy at the sight of the knife, the promise of bloodshed.

Flushed pink with high spirits that was coursing through his veins, an adrenaline brought by the dancing. Jack Merridew was flying.

"I have realized my error."

The boys looked at each other in an emotion akin to shock on their faces. Their chief never admitted that he was wrong. And why would he? Their chief was never wrong.

"I should not have left the pig head back at the clearing."

"But- but I thought- I thought that you said-"

It was one of the littluns that had recently started hunting with them that was faced with Jack's immediate wrath.

"I know what I said, you silly little boy. But leaving the pig head there is not a suitable gift for the beast. No, not a gift...a sacrifice. Yes, that is correct. A sacrifice."

Jack braced himself, and said louder, with utter conviction, even though he was secretly still conflicting within himself. "I will get the pig's head and roast it as a sacrifice to the beast!"

He was met with screams, yells of approval and simple adoration, and his hunters resumed dancing around the fire, preparing for the pig's head so they can dance it to ashes.

It was still at the clearing, as he had remembered, perched on top of a stick whose other end stuck firmly into the soil. There were flies buzzing around it, a piece of darkness itself separated from the sky.

Jack slipped down from the rock carefully, using his knife as a leverage, then hurried cautiously towards the pig's severed head. Crouching down onto the soil to avoid the flies, he leaned forward to pull the stick out of the ground.

"Jack."

It was sweet and feminine, a caressing of words wrapped into velvet, a familiar sound from his nightmares.

He froze, locked into his crouching position on the dirt, unable to move. There was a shiver crawling up from the bottom of his back all the way up to his neck, then as if there was an ice cold hand he felt his chin grasped and lifted up, and so he had no choice to stare was laid before him.

Jack gave out a whispered gasp from the back of his throat. It was still the pig's head he had cut triumphantly not more than a few hours earlier; but it was as if the night sky had somehow corrupted the face it had before him.

The skin was rotten and decayed, and strips of it were missing, with the flesh turned a dark bruised plum-black. The lips were pulled back into a smirk with mirth curling the lips at a corner, showing yellow, sharp pointy teeth. There was no snout, in its place was a messy pulp of flesh. But the thing that the pig head had that it shouldn't- that no one else in the world should- an unnatural carbon copy of his eyes staring back at him, that he had only seen on no one else but him, and his mother.

Abruptly releasing the stick he stumbled back, all traces of being drunk on wildness gone.

He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. "No."

"Dearest," the voice belonging to his mother in the utmost sadness. "Didn't you miss me? Didn't you miss your beloved mommy?"

Jack didn't reply and he crawled back hurriedly, ignoring the sharp stabs of annoyance given by the rocks and blades of grass.

He reeled forwards as his head struck onto the cliff that marked the ending of the clearing, seeing stars in his mind, and wondered in his delirium of pain if he was dead. It seemed the most logical reason why his mother was here.

The pig head spoke again.

"My boy," it said, this time in the tones of his headmaster, but it was nothing like how he informed Jack would be the next head boy. It was oozing of disappointment. "Don't you understand that there is no escape? Come here at once! Do you know how foolish-"

He was interrupted by another voice, and the pig's eyes that had turned back into normal when his headmaster spoke, half lidded and dull, changed back into the intense blue he had seen earlier.

"Jack? Don't you remember me? It's me, my little boy, it's mommy!" His mother's voice rang out. "Come here now," she continued, her voiced honeyed as if speaking to a little child of tender age, promising of the most delicious secrets, "I have to tell you a secret _something_." The last word was lowered, as if there were eavesdroppers in the middle of nowhere. The trees all, as one, leaned in to overhear their conversation.

He gave up resisting and found himself shuffling forwards towards the head, with beads of blood all over his body from the scratches that penetrated too deep into the skin. And when he reached his destination, he found that he could not move at all.

"Much better, much much better."

It was the headmaster who spoke this time, his words approving, as if he was discussing which fine pig had the honor to grace the table that night.

Jack gave a soft, almost unheard croak.

"Mother."

The pig seem to grin at him, and the eyes turned into its own, shining with mirth, yet lanced with unreadable scorn.

"Yes," Jack heard his headmaster adapt amusing tone, "Isn't it rather amusing that one can be afraid of their own mother, the one who gave birth to you?"

Jack fell his jaw go slack and his mouth opened, only to promptly close it as one of the many flies encircling the pig's head came near.

"How-how-"

"I find it rather curious that you didn't hear Roger speak or your beloved," the pig's lips promptly sneered, "Ralph."

"You bast-"

The voice suddenly turn abrupt. "Go on then now, little child," the headmaster said patronizingly, "you don't your ickle little hunty-friendsies to be disappointed now, do you? After all," and this was said sarcastically, "they must be _greatly_ disappointed if their _great_ chief is not there with them, acting as their _great_ _mommy, _being-"

"Shut up! You don't, you-"

Jack gave out a hacking cough, and spat out flecks of blood that decorated the grass.

"Yet- but how did you know? Know- know that I... Know all about _that _of me?"

He wanted to wave his hands around the air as if to demonstrate the point but found them still pinned beside him.

The headmaster tutted.

"Who are you?" Jack snarled. "Answer me!"

"My, my," said the gruesome head, "what a big mood swing! And mind your attitude, young boy. Now as for who I am... Do give yourself some credit, will you?" The head floated off the stick and suspended, in mid air, in front of the kneeling boy.

He found himself staring at the blank eyes, with its voice echoing in his mind, and his heart giving out a hypnotic tic-tock tic-tock, letting him to fall onto the answer. And when he realized it, he knew it was correct, but could not bring himself to say it.

"Simon was right," Jack finally bit out, and the revelation resounded onto the dry night air. "You..." he swallowed, "You really know everything about me, don't you? All about my mother and Roger and my hatr-... and my secrets and fears and everything and all that and Ralph and-"

He found his cheeks glow alight with flames when he said his name, whether in shame or mortification or embarrassed or the fact that his heart seemed to stop whenever seeing him or that..

"That I do," the head acknowledged with barely veiled amusement.

The cheeks blushed again, but this time with anger. "You're the beast."

It was announced in a flat tone, and would have been rather impressive, except for the shudder that trembled in his body that accompanied that statement afterwards.

"That I am," the head acknowledged once more, before replying. "However... don't you think that the generic term 'the beast' is too crude and common? I would rather you call me 'Lord of the Flies'." It was at that moment that the wind, a breeze made of sighs came and all the trees rustled, along with the flowers and the plants with agreement. There was no other sound than the never ending whispers flowing around the clearing before dying away, letting the other creatures of the night create their own music once more.

The head twisted its lips into a maniacal grin, this time showing all its teeth, but it was pearl white rather than the dirty brown-yellow Jack had seen before. "I've taught you well; and in such a short time too. You, in turn, taught your followers. Very, very good indeed. And now you should know that although not kind, the Lord of the Flies awards the faithful and obedient."

Jack felt his mouth dry up in horror. "Faithful and obedient?" he heard himself echo weakly. "You-you mean that all I've done..."

The Lord of the Flies ignored his question, and said with a sardonic filled tone, "I've seen that you love hunting, which you do, don't you?" The pig head levitated even closer to Jack's face, until he was able to smell the overpowering stench of rotting flesh and hear the flies buzz near his ears. "You should know that the greatest pleasure in hunting does not lay in killing pigs... And that I will give you three chances to recognize it..."

Trying his hardest to block to the stink from drugging him any further, Jack gasped. "What have you done?" When he realize that there was nothing different with him, he yelled, louder, "What are you going to do?"

The pig head drifted even closer to the stunned boy, and whispered. "Do? Done? I haven't done anything. All I have is to set course to the correct future for you."

Jack desperately wanted to say that the future was his own, that no one, would be able to change it for him unless he deemed fit, but he could not move his mouth. Then the Lord of the Flies seemed to somehow, as Jack watched, paralyzed on the ground, tell him that he didn't understand, but they were no longer in the clearing but rather in a roomful of shadows that was growing dimmer and dimmer.

The last thing Jack saw was the Lord of the Flies giving him a grin belonging to a demon that showed its needle like teeth, before warping into his mother's face then Roger's face then Ralph's face, then too quickly to see anything but blurs of different faces and things; before falling down, down, down into the pits of night, unable to see anything, for if he did he would see a blood filled moon, waxing until the light overcame the darkness.


End file.
